Weekly transmissions from our shared future.

Lab-Grown Meat, Soylent, and Nutrient Pills: The Future of Food

Tomorrow, most of us will probably, at some point, sit down with their friends and/or family, have a few drinks, catch up, and oh yeah, eat some food.

There’s a very good chance that the food you eat will be, well, food. Chances are it’ll ​consist of some mix​ of turkey, tofurkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc.

But in a few years, our meals might look very different. Silicon Valley startup types are ​trying to “disrupt” food with things like ​Soylent, a shake that contains every nutrient you need to not eat real food again.

Meanwhile, ​scientists all around the world are trying to grow lab-cultivated meat, arguing that it’s both cruelty free and better for the environment than raising animals. Finally, you’ve got some wacky people who want to cultivate meat using human cells, making it totally possible that, one day, you’ll be able to eat yourself.

Now seems like a good time to discuss what that future might look like and to answer burning questions such as: “Is Soylent gross?,” “Would you eat yourself?,” and “​Do you think Kanye West would eat a sausage made out of himself?”

So, for the second episode of Radio Motherboard (​which is what we’re calling this whole podcasting thing), we grabbed senior editor Brian Merchant, who once spent 30 days living on Soylent, staff writer Jason Koebler, who writes regularly about lab-grown food, senior producer Chris O’Coin, who is a vegetarian, and Helen Hollyman, ​Editor-in-Chief of our food-centric sister publication, Munchies, to talk about all this stuff. Have a great Thanksgiving, and enjoy eating food.